The pseudorandom writings of a pseudonerd

July 30, 2015

The 3rd time is a charm..

I tried using the Glyde service twice in the past with pretty bad results. The first time the seller pulled out. In that case Glyde gave me a $50 credit towards a new purchase. I tried once again with the same result. They were nice enough to give me a full refund, but it really wasted my time. Since then I have purchased used phones through eBay and Amazon with their own list of horrible problems, so I decided to try Glyde again after not finding what I wanted through Gazelle. All the time I spent trying to track down a good deal is probably valued at the same rate as a new iPhone 6s, but I wouldn't have the same sense of accomplishment.

July 18, 2015

A month without a smartphone

Recently my wife lost her iPhone at Disneyland. I had no luck with FindMyiPhone or the carrier specific services. The hotel where she was staying at had no returned device. She needed the iPhone-tastic features, so I moved her number over to my iPhone and picked up a crappy(tm) Tracfone to use until we were sure that her phone was indeed lost and non-recoverable.

When I mean crappy pre-paid phone, I mean the $9.00 USD unit that I picked up at Walmart on special, since I didn't expect to use it long. A week turned into two, but I was still holding on to a false hope that I'd get the other handset back. No dice. About three weeks into this venture I was still working with the crap-tastic phone and relearning how to T9 text message, my Mom had a medical emergency. I had to make my way to the midwest to help deal with family emergency.

At that point I was starting to feel like a second class citizen. Lacking even the most basic of 2G cellular Internet connectivity, I was at the whim of my laptop battery and the airport/hotel/restaurant wifi for any sort of information. Lyft and Uber were unattainable and I ended up paying 2x as much on my Taxi fare from the airport that I would have with a ride sharing services.

As much as it was limiting, it was a freeing experience. I didn't have my email dinging constantly. I didn't have my Facebook notifications buzzing in my pocket. If is an unsettling feeling when you start to understand that you so plugged into things that you start wasting all of your idle time seeing what people are posting on Instagram. At some point I need to do a full digital detox. With a pen and paper, a few dozen rolls of 35mm film and a bunch of people that I love.